Most influenced by these 20th c. works

Discover the 20th century's most influential books that shaped literature, culture, and thought. Explore groundbreaking works that defined an era and continue to inspire today.

Underworld Cover
Book

Underworld

by Don DeLillo

A finalist for the National Book Award, Don DeLillo's most powerful and riveting novel--"a great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner" (San Francisco Chronicle)--Underworld is about the second half of the twentieth century in America and about two people, an artist and an executive, whose lives intertwine in New York in the fifties and again in the nineties. With cameo appearances by Lenny Bruce, J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Thompson, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor, "this is DeLillo's most affecting novel...a dazzling, phosphorescent work of art" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Cover
Book

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

 

No summary available.
One Hundred Years of Solitude Cover
Book

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez

The rise and fall, birth and death, of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the BuendĂ­a family.
The Handmaid's Tale Cover
Book

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (The New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic. Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood
Immortality Cover
Book

Immortality

by Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.
Gravity's Rainbow Cover
Book

Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

In the mid-1960s, the publication of Pynchon's V and The Crying of Lot 49 introduced a brilliant new voice to American literature. Gravity's Rainbow, his convoluted, allusive novel about a metaphysical quest, published in 1973, further confirmed Pynchon's reputation as one of the greatest writers of the century.
Landscape Painted with Tea Cover
Book

Landscape Painted with Tea

by Milorad Pavic

By the author of the highly acclaimed literary bestseller Dictionary of the Khazars, this is a tale of a mysterious quest that is part modern Odyssey and part crossword puzzle. It begins with the story of a brilliant but failed architect in Belgrade and his search for his father, an officer who vanished in Greece during World War II. The truth about his fate—some of it set in motion 2,000 years ago and some of it by the Nazis—is raveled in the history and secrets of Mount Athos, the most ancient of all monasteries, perched atop its inaccessible mountain on the Aegean. “A hugely ambitious, playful, inventive, demanding, magical, linguistically sensuous reading experience.”—The Washington Post “A brilliantly playful and haunting novel.”—The New York Times Book Review
The Name of the Rose Cover
Book

The Name of the Rose

by Umberto Eco

In 1327, finding his sensitive mission at an Italian abbey further complicated by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William of Baskerville turns detective.
Infinite Jest Cover
Book

Infinite Jest

 

No summary available.
The Rules of Attraction Cover
Book

The Rules of Attraction

by Bret Easton Ellis

From the New York Times bestselling author or Less Than Zero and American Psycho—a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England with no plans for the future—or even the present—who become entangled in a romantic triangle. • “An extraordinary writer.” —LA Weekly Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor who split for Europe months ago and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letter to ambivalent, hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren, even if he ends up in bed with half the campus, and Paul, Lauren's ex, forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted, race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed To Get Screwed parties to drinks at The Edge of the World or The Graveyard. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance. The basis for the major motion picture starring James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Jessica Biel, and Kate Bosworth. Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards!
Item Not Found
ID: 0865473455
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0871401541
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0156806479
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0520222636
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0374518173
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0880015470
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0880012420
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0807612405
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 1556592116
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0822309297
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0226472051
(Type: books)